


the space between heartbeats

by MercuryPoisoning



Category: RWBY
Genre: Angst, Author Is Sleep Deprived, Blake is helpful, Bumbleby - Freeform, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Lesbian Tears, Yang Xiao Long Angst, Yang Xiao Long Needs a Hug, Yang has anger issues, but Blake is a supportive gf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:54:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25541686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryPoisoning/pseuds/MercuryPoisoning
Summary: Fire can be exhausting. It's not all just punch and go.-(The context of this is pretty ambiguous, make of it what you will.)
Relationships: Blake Belladonna/Yang Xiao Long
Kudos: 76
Collections: bumbleby snapshots





	the space between heartbeats

There is a certain stillness that settles over her heart when the fire starts burning. Sometimes it’s barely perceptible over the roar in her ears, but always it’s there. A little white spot at the centre of an inferno. An echo of silence in between falling bombs.

Yang doesn’t notice it until she’s older; she doesn’t become truly attuned to the various nuances of her semblance until she almost loses it. Waking up to a missing arm is one thing. Waking up to a missing arm and a note on the table and a hush in the room and a gaping, searing, agonizing _absence_ \- well, that is something else entirely. It took weeks for her to nurse that flame back to life, weeks to feel human again, to feel _alive_. It was like starting from the beginning all over again, but it gave her new perspective. Now she _knows_ it’s there. That little spot. That refuge.

These days, it’s easy to forget that there was ever a time when she couldn’t activate her semblance. But Yang understands - much more deeply now - her total dependance on its fire. Without the fast burn of pure anger, she is nothing. A shell. A vessel for the aching sadness that lingers in her heart. Yang has always sought that anger; now she seeks the silence that comes with it, too.

Perhaps it wouldn’t be hyperbole to say that she _craves_ it.

But that’s a lot to ponder over, and Yang needs silence, so she throws hit after rage-blinded hit at the hapless punching bag in the belly of Atlas Academy’s vaulted gym, revelling in the burn of her eyes and the throb of her shoulders and the way the stitched Atlas emblem reels before her anger. And that moment of complete stillness, when she has gone so far into herself that there is nothing left but blinding, shuddering, white-hot _fire_. In this moment there is no thinking. There is no complication. There is just Yang and her fists and the pure, total silence.

And when it slips away ( _everything does eventually_ ) there is Yang alone in the gym, chest heaving, sweat dripping into her eyes; eyes that flicker with the vestiges of an inferno before they fade back into exhausted lavender. The Atlas-embossed punching bag swings back and forth, and Yang matches her breath to its swing. Her heart rate slows in pace with its fading metronome until she feels she might just vanish, dissolve into the particles of the stuff around her until everything becomes exactly the same.

Yang comes back into herself slowly, so slowly, and she can feel the exhaustion like an oppressive weight on her shoulders. Her knees are weak. Her chest burns with a feeling she doesn’t care to unpack.

Someone is standing behind her.

She becomes aware of this fact very slowly, the same way you become aware of your surroundings very slowly when you awake in a new and unfamiliar place. First there is the observation: she is not alone. Then there is the fact: there is someone standing close behind her. Then there is the realization: it’s Blake, and Yang is certain of this long before Blake calls her name ( _softly, like she might break_ ). Yang doesn’t have the voice to reply with any more than she has the will to turn around. So she waits. Blake comes closer.

“Yang, it’s late,” Blake says, so soft, and Yang wonders vaguely how she can make something so ambiguous sound so commanding. Yang rolls back her shoulders and turns to face her.

Blake is in sweatpants and a tank top, her feet bare. Yang studies her face and wonders if it’s just the shadows in here that make the dark smudges under her eyes look more pronounced. “Hi, Blake,” she croaks, her voice foreign in her own ears. “I was just finishing up. I’ll head back now.”

Blake just looks at her for a long moment, and Yang feels stripped bare. She’s stopped wondering why Blake always finds her here. Why she always seems to _know_. So when Blake asks, a little frown creasing her forehead, “Did you come down alright?” Yang can only nod. The sense of defeat is overwhelming. She hopes Blake will go, now, hopes she won’t stick around to watch Yang collapse - because it’s not always this bad, but right now Yang feels like she could die beneath the weight of everything. Blake has her own problems to contend with, and Yang loathes the way she always shows up here at the right ( _wrong_ ) time, her footsteps quiet and her eyes full of that unsettling _understanding_.

Blake spreads her hands, a gesture so helpless it strikes Yang as ironic. “Yang,” she pleads. “Stop this. You’re tearing yourself apart.”

Yang can only shake her head. Speaking is no longer even a viable option.

When the tears come they come quietly, in shakes and shallow breaths, and when Blake wraps her arms around her that too comes without words. In the absence of fire and its silence Yang doesn’t know who she is. But in Blake’s arms she finds a different kind of quiet; and this one, she thinks, she could get used to. Maybe it’s not enough to silence the noise in her head, but it rearranges it. For one moment it is just the two of them and nothing else. One flower left when the ground has been razed. One breath of stillness between the bolt of lightning and its thunderous growl. One moment of time that separates heartbeats.

Just a drop of time, hardly a ripple, but in it Yang peels back the armour and becomes whole again.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in the feverish transition from 2am to 3am. Hope you all enjoy this lil slice of angsty bees as we wait for them to just fucking kiss on screen already <3


End file.
